Jobs: $500 Apple laptop 'would be junk'

Claims the iPhone is Apple's netbook

By Gregg Keizer | 23 October 08

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has said that Apple has no imminent plans to compete in the growing market for small, inexpensive laptops, claiming the company wouldn't know how to make a $500 laptop that wasn't "a piece of junk".

Jobs argued that Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch have much of the same functionality as the ultra-light, low-cost notebooks.

"We choose to be in certain segments of the market and we choose not to be in certain segments of the market," Jobs told Wall Street analysts.

Jobs downplayed the current market for ultra-small laptops, which he referred to last week as nascent. "As best as we can tell, there's not a lot of them getting sold," he said.

Later in the question-and-answer session, Jobs said that although Apple would continue to add features to its notebooks as it dropped prices, he was unwilling to play in the netbook category as current defined.

"We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that," Jobs said. "But we can continue to deliver greater and greater value to those customers that we choose to serve and there's a lot of them. And we've seen great success by focusing on certain segments of the market and not trying to be everything to everybody."

Courting netbook dollars

At the same time, it was clear that Jobs considers Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch as courting netbook dollars. "One of our entrants into that category, if you will, is the iPhone for browsing the internet and doing email and all the other things that a netbook lets you do," he said. "Being connected wherever you are, an iPhone is a pretty good solution for that, and it fits in your pocket."

Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, agreed with Jobs. "For Apple, the iPhone and iPod Touch are a way to provide web access devices to the rest of the world," he said, referring to the popularity of netbooks outside the US. "And it prevents them from cannibalising their MacBook lines."

Jobs, however, left the door open to a change in strategy if Apple does decide it needs to join the game. "We'll wait and see how that nascent category evolves," he said. "And we've got some pretty interesting ideas if it does evolve."

Gottheil said that if Apple did compete with the netbooks such as the Eee PC from Asustek, the Aspire One from Acer and the Mini-Note from HP, it was likely to stick to its premium-price model. "I don't think Apple would go below $500," Gottheil said. The netbook category is defined by some, including research firm Gartner, as lightweight laptops that cost less than $500.

The lowest Gottheil could see Apple going was $599, above that cut-off but $400 under its current entry-level MacBook notebook. Apple reduced the price of that model last week when it unveiled redesigned MacBooks and MacBook Pros.